Page 36 of Prosecco with My Professor
Santo droppedthat bomb on me, those gritted words spoken like a vow, and then turned around and stomped out my door.
“I’ll show you exactly how good it can be myself.”
Part of me is doubtful. I rarely orgasmed around Bruce for a variety of reasons. And, of course, it didn’t start like that. But that is how it ends up, usually, when you’ve had kids and jobs and over twenty years of marriage.
Back when I’d started getting to know Jade better, I discovered that women my age really do have great sex. But Jade was single, knowledgeable, outgoing, confident…a slew of things that I wasn’t. I’d done some searching online and wandered upon a forum called Dead Bedrooms, full of people who had marriages with unsatisfactory sex lives.
I saw post after post that could have been written by me—or Bruce. Maybe it wasn’tnormal, but it was happening often enough, and I related to it.
But there’s another part of me, the part of me that replays Santo’s words over and over again, that gets carried away imagining what being with Santo could be like. Leaning back against my door, I clench my thighs together, aching just from that simple sentence.
I was serious when I said I wasn’t going back to Bruce. I will admit, there were a few moments this weekend with Hattie where it felt like a family again. Touring Rome, my gaze occasionally caught Bruce’s as we both smiled wistfully at her enthusiasm, the unspokenCan you believe we created this?passing between us.
And then Bruce had shown up on my doorstep Sunday morning with the flowers and he’d taken me out to breakfast and proposed that we try again. That maybe “we’d” been too hasty in filing for divorce.
I had politely, but firmly, told Bruce no.
I wish I’d had a picture of his face to show my friends.
Words will have to do. I move to the couch and start a video call. Tessa might be traveling back to Portugal from visiting Luc, but Sara and Jade are probably available.
Sara answers first, her phone propped up on the counter in the kitchen. She teaches yoga classes online live on the weekends, but she dedicates her Sunday nights to meal-prepping.
She steps back and waves as Jade joins the call. Jade is on her couch, reading glasses on and a cocktail in hand. While we mostly drink wine together, Jade loves a good homemade fancy cocktail, so I’m not surprised by that.
We all say hello and then discuss Tessa’s whereabouts, speculating if she was on her flight back from Paris or hadn’t left yet. Or if she decided to miss it entirely and spend an extra day or two in Paris, which she has threatened to do several times. She works remotely for a travel magazine, so she can work from anywhere, but she usually chooses not to because Luc is “distracting,” saying it in a way that makes it clear that they have lots of sex. How he can be “distracting” while living with his octogenarian grandmother is anyone’s guess.
Before we can finish speculating, Tessa joins the call, and we ask about her weekend and tease her to her face about her eleven-years-younger boyfriend. She laughs and looks smug and not at all embarrassed. And then she diverts the attention to me.
“Was there a particular reason you called, Emma? Maybe something having to do with being MIA all weekend?” she asks.
“I was MIA because Hattie came to visit me.”
All three of them coo.
“And Bruce came with her.”
Dead silence.
Well, Bruce really surprised them—and me—when he asked for a divorce, so Bruce is two-and-oh now.
“Excuse me? Disculpe? Darao yixià?” That’s Jade. She learned some Mandarin when she worked in Shanghai.
“Why did Bruce come to Rome?” Tessa asks.
I fill them in on the entire weekend, up to Bruce leaving but skipping over Bruce meeting Santo. When I describe the flowers he brought and the way he held my hand at breakfast as he asked me to reconsider our relationship, there’s a variety of faces staring back at me. Jade looks bemused, Tessa pained, and Sara bewildered.
“I said no,” I clarify.
Tessa’s face relaxes, like maybe she was worried about it. Jade just says, “Of course you did,” and Sara laughs.
“You should have seen his face,” I tell them. “I really was pretty firm about it. He was surprised, and he kept saying I should think about it. He offered to help me with an MBA program in Austin. And, of course, he pointed out that I could see the kids more.”
“I know that’s tempting,” Sara says. “And I’m not really one to speak about independence from your kids since I went all the way to Germany to be with mine, but still. I’m proud of you.”
“You can do so much better,” Jade chimes in.
“That’s what Santo said.”
